Between Two Mafia Dons

Married to Don Victor for three years, I thought I could finally forget the pain and betrayal of my ex-husband, Dominic. This cold, ruthless man ruled the East Coast underworld. But he handed me the world on a silver platter, healing my broken pieces. Until late one night. Victor's underboss called, frantic, begging me to rush to Manhattan's top private hospital. Victor and Dominic were in a standoff outside the maternity ward. Guns drawn, surrounded by their elite hitmen. They were inches away from sparking an all-out mob war. And standing between them was my ex-best friend, Chloe. She was visibly pregnant. The Commission's mediator slid a truce across the table. His expression was painfully awkward. "The security tapes are clear. The two Dons nearly blew up the entire floor just to decide who gets to stay in her room tonight." Numbly, I signed the papers as the Donna of the Costello family. Prenatal vitamins bought by Victor already piled high in the room. Meanwhile, his and Dominic's men were still arguing over the schedule—how the two Mafia Dons would split their week to keep Chloe company, three days each. When I walked up to the bed, the two lethal men who were just at each other's throats now stood guarding her on both sides. Victor shielded her belly. The same lips that used to kiss every inch of my body now spit out bone-chilling words: "I forced her. If you have a problem, take it up with me." My ex-husband, Dominic, glared at me viciously. "Keep your mad dog of a husband in check. Tell him to stop harassing my woman!" I slowly shook my head. Watching this farce, silent tears slid down my cheeks. A mobster's love... in the end, it's just a cheap lie. Victor, I don't want you anymore either. Chapter 1 "Sign the agreement." Wiping cold sweat from his forehead, the mediator slid a truce across the table. The sharp stench of gunpowder and rubbing alcohol hung heavy in the air. Just ten minutes ago, my husband, Victor, and my ex-husband, Dominic, nearly shot the VIP maternity ward to pieces. Elite hitmen from both families had guns drawn. And all for one reason: my ex-best friend Chloe’s small baby bump. I held the pen. My hand didn't shake at all. After I signed my name, Victor waved off his armed guards. The ruthless Don of the East Coast walked up to me. Out of habit, he reached out to pull me into his arms. I coldly stepped aside. His hand froze in mid-air. But there was no guilt in his eyes. He pulled his hand back smoothly. His tone was cold, leaving no room for argument. "Go back to the estate," he said, adjusting his cuffs, looking down at me. "Chloe is in shock. The doctor said stress is dangerous for her pregnancy. I have to stay at the hospital with her tonight." Before he even finished, a tall figure roughly shoved Victor aside. It was Dominic. "Back the fuck off, Costello!" Dominic shoved his gun barrel straight against Victor’s forehead. "Chloe is carrying Russo blood. You don't get to play hero with my woman!" Victor scoffed. In a flash, he drew his signature Glock and pressed it hard against Dominic’s chest. "Is that so? Because she was just crying, begging me to stay." Down the hall, safeties clicked off in unison. The air turned freezing cold. "It hurts..." A weak, fragile cry suddenly came from the hospital room. Chloe looked deathly pale, weakly clutching her belly. The two Mafia Dons, who were just at each other's throats, holstered their guns instantly. Like two tamed mad dogs, they rushed to her bedside. Victor grabbed her left arm. His voice was softer than I had ever heard. "Don't be afraid. I'm here." Dominic guarded her right side, roaring at the doctor, "What the fuck are you waiting for? Check on her!" Together, they helped her back into bed. Their broad backs completely blocked her from view. From start to finish, Victor didn't even glance my way. It was as if I, the legal Donna of the Costello family, was just thin air. Something to be thrown away. I walked out of the mob-locked hospital alone. The midnight wind cut my face like a knife. My stomach cramped violently. I stumbled to my black Aston Martin and slumped against the hood, dry-heaving in pain. How pathetic. Three years ago, I was just as pathetic. I felt sick and came home early. But on our large bed, my husband of five years, Don Dominic—the man I gave everything to—was tangled naked with Chloe. Chloe was even wearing my brand-new silk nightgown. Red-eyed, I confronted him. But Dominic didn't even look up. He just shielded Chloe in his arms and gave me one word: "Get out." That night, Victor found me almost passed out in the heavy rain. The Costello heir. The man who once saved me from being bullied at a charity auction. He took off his black trench coat—it smelled of gunpowder—and wrapped it tightly around my shaking body. "Vivienne, he doesn't deserve you," he said, stroking my hair with bloodstained hands. "Come with me." For three years, this terrifying Boss gave me nothing but ultimate tenderness. He learned to cook my favorite seafood pasta late at night. He gave me the passwords to all his armories and offshore accounts. In bed, he kissed my scars over and over with deep passion. He promised to cut out the rot Dominic left behind, piece by piece. I thought it was my grand salvation. But reality slapped me hard in the face. I pushed open the estate doors. The dim lights stung my eyes. A huge wedding photo of us in Sicily hung in the living room. On the dining table sat cold Wagyu steaks and a decanted bottle of Romanée-Conti. The calendar on the wall had today's date circled heavily in red. Our third wedding anniversary. I walked to the table and gently touched my flat stomach. To give the Costello family an heir, I went through hell. Five rounds of IVF. My belly was covered in dark bruises and needle marks. Not an inch of good skin left. This morning, I finally saw two bright red lines on the pregnancy test. I was so happy. I thought it was the perfect anniversary gift for him. My eyes slowly dropped to the test stick resting in a jewelry box. I cried so many tears and suffered so much for this bloodline he wanted. But now, this surprise was nothing but a sick joke. Chapter 2 The next day, Victor went to handle family business as usual. I was at home, organizing my closet for the season, looking for a coat. At the very bottom of his safe, in a hidden compartment, my fingers brushed against a box. It needed a fingerprint and a passcode. It was Victor's private stash. He had warned me never to touch it. But today, the system seemed broken. A red warning light flashed. The metal door was slightly ajar. Driven by some unknown urge, I reached out and opened the lid. There were no piles of diamonds. No hit lists. Just photos, carefully laminated. I pulled one out. My breath caught in my throat. In the photo, Chloe was in a red bikini, laughing wildly on the deck of a private yacht. Victor was hugging her waist tightly from behind, their faces pressed close together. The crazy obsession in his eyes was something I had never seen in our three years of marriage. I flipped the photo over. A date was written on the back. Five years ago. To be exact, the same year Dominic cheated on me with Chloe. I moved the photos aside. Underneath lay a thick psychiatric file. [Patient: Victor Costello] [Diagnosis: Severe Bipolar Disorder, with extreme violent and self-destructive tendencies] [Trigger: Severe relationship trauma] [Date: Five years ago] Every clue slammed together into a terrifying web. Five years ago, Victor wasn't a Don yet. So the greedy, vain Chloe dumped him and threw herself into Don Dominic's arms. My fingers started shaking uncontrollably. Suddenly, the electronic chime of the front door lock beeped. Victor was home early! Breaking into a cold sweat, I shoved the files and photos back into the compartment and slammed the lid shut. Heavy footsteps were already on the second-floor hallway. I crawled to the very back of the walk-in closet, hiding desperately behind rows of heavy couture gowns. Victor strode into the bedroom. He grabbed a silenced pistol he had forgotten on the nightstand. Just then, his phone rang. He answered. His voice was low, but laced with a cruel chill that reached my ears clearly. "Dominic sent men to shoot up Chloe’s place? That coward." Victor checked his gun, his tone vicious. "Chop those rats' heads off. Hang them on the Russo family's front gates." The person on the other end said something, and Victor sneered. "Years ago, Chloe left me for Dominic because I wasn't in power yet. He took what was mine. Now I’m going to make him lose everything." His voice shook slightly with crazed hatred. "I married Vivienne just to get back at Dominic! I want Dominic to watch as his ex-wife—the one who would have died for him—worships me and begs for me!" "Chloe is pregnant now. I won't let her and the baby suffer with that piece of trash Dominic. When the time is right, I’ll wipe out the Russo family and take everything back." My breath stopped. My blood ran cold, and my limbs went completely numb. Three years of patience. The blushing, tender romance in bed. The tears he kissed off my forehead during every egg retrieval for IVF. All fake. All part of a revenge trap he spun for a woman who betrayed him. I thought I had escaped Dominic's hell and found a god to save me. In reality, I had just walked into a slaughterhouse built by a madman for another man. I bit down hard on my hand. My teeth sank deep into my flesh, tasting heavy copper blood, just to choke back my tearing sobs. Tears smashed against the cold floor. My whole life was nothing but a complete joke. Chapter 3 After Victor left, I sat dead on the floor. My empty eyes dropped to my flat stomach. A violent wave of nausea rushed up my throat. I did five rounds of IVF to give him this so-called Costello heir. My belly was horribly covered in thick clusters of needle marks. Purple and blue, hard lump after hard lump. Not a single inch of intact skin. On the operating table, the sharp pain of cold metal tools scraping inside me brought out buckets of cold sweat. Every time I shook from the pain and bit my lip bloody, Victor would hold my hand tightly. He would look at me with those deep, loving eyes and kiss the sweat off my forehead. "Hold on a little longer, Vivienne," he used to tell me in his deep, magnetic voice. "I want a child with both our blood so badly. It's proof that we saved each other." Saved each other. Now, those sugar-coated lies turned into the most wicked curse! I stared at the bruises on my belly, trembling violently. When he watched me endure a living hell, ruining my own body for him, what the hell was he thinking? Was he thinking about how jealous Dominic would be when he saw me pregnant? I actually threw half my life away for a madman's revenge game! Memories crashed in like a broken dam. They tasted like rust and blood, tearing at my fragile nerves. It was fifteen years ago in the Brooklyn slums. Dominic wasn't a Mafia Don back then. He was just a low-level thug who could get hacked to death in the streets at any moment. Rainy nights in New York were always freezing. I will never forget that abandoned garage. Dominic was hunted down by enemies. He lay in a muddy puddle, covered in blood, coughing up blood. It was me. I starved myself every day, saving all my lunch money to buy expensive black-market antibiotics and bandages. To protect his pathetic pride, I slipped the meds under the crack of the garage door in secret. I did it for three whole years. One winter, an enemy’s knife aimed straight for his heart. I threw myself in front of him, taking the blade meant for his heart! My back still has an ugly ten-inch scar to this day. I thought risking my life would earn me his true love. But what did I get at our high school graduation? I stood in a dark corner of the hall, clutching a greeting card I bought for him. I watched with my own eyes as Dominic, in a cheap suit, grabbed Chloe's hands excitedly. "Chloe, I found out everything. For the past three years, if you hadn't secretly slipped me those meds, I would’ve died in that gutter." Dominic's eyes were full of crazy gratitude. "You saved my life." And my so-called "best friend" Chloe just blushed shyly and leaned into his arms. "I just wanted you to be safe, Dominic." Hiding in the shadows, my heart was ripped to shreds. But I was too stupid. I thought if I stayed by his side, he would eventually see who really loved him. Later, they broke up. Dominic fought his way up in the mob. I stayed with him in unheated basements, washing the blood out of his shirts. He finally made it. He became the Boss of the Russo family and married me. I thought I had finally won. But the very first thing he did after reaching the top was bring Chloe into our home. I bit my lip hard, tears streaming down my face. Neither of them ever loved me. Dominic loved Chloe, his so-called "savior" from his darkest days. And the safe haven Victor built with everything he had was also for Chloe, the woman who betrayed him. The three of them were tangled in a twisted, sick game—but they dragged me down to skin me alive. Chapter 4 The storm on the dark web hit suddenly. Someone posted a bounty thread on an underground forum, exposing the messy love triangle between Chloe, Dominic, and Victor. The post called Chloe a mob whore who wrecked the marriages of the Russo and Costello Dons, playing two Mafia Bosses against each other. The thread blew up. Soon, the Bosses on the Commission saw it. The Commission lost their minds. Countless mobsters demanded she be executed by Mafia law for risking an all-out gang war. That afternoon, Victor and Dominic stormed into my estate with their guards. Dominic pointed a finger in my face and screamed. "Vivienne, you vicious bitch! Chloe is pregnant. Are you trying to get her killed with this hit post?!" I sneered. Before I could even speak, Victor stepped up and stood in front of me. "Enough, Dominic. This is my house." Victor turned to me, slipping right back into his arrogant Don persona. "Vivienne," his voice was sickeningly calm. "I know this isn't fair. But the Commission wants blood now. Chloe is in danger." "And?" I looked at the face I once loved deeply. He felt like a total stranger. "I need you to post a video on the dark web using your real name," Victor ordered, looking down at me. "Tell them you made the whole thing up out of jealousy and spite." I couldn't believe my ears. "Victor, I'm a respected art restorer. If I admit to slander, my career in high society is completely ruined. Did you even think about me at all?" Victor frowned. "I’ll compensate you. However much money you want, millions in offshore accounts—it's yours. You never have to work again, I can take care of you for life. But not Chloe. She can't handle this kind of shock right now." I laughed out of pure anger. "I'm not taking the fall for this." Victor’s eyes turned ice-cold. He pulled out a document and tossed it onto the coffee table. "Vivienne, I’m trying to let you keep your dignity. If you don't clear her name, don't blame me for being ruthless." I looked down, my pupils shrinking. It was a divorce agreement drafted by a lawyer. And right underneath it was a photocopy. It was Victor and Chloe’s secret marriage certificate! Issued exactly one week ago. "What does this mean?" I was freezing all over, my voice shaking. "You still don't get it?" Victor calmly dropped the cruelest truth. "A month ago, when I took you to sign the family trust papers, I slipped the divorce papers in." "You signed them a long time ago, Vivienne." "The child in Chloe's belly has to be the legitimate Costello heir. She needs the title." My mind went completely blank. Nausea rolled wildly in my stomach again. "By the way, I’ve already issued a statement on the dark web under the Costello family name," Victor said, adjusting his tie. "It clearly states that I kicked you out a month ago. That bounty thread was just the insane ramblings of a pathetic, mentally unstable ex-wife out for revenge." I trembled, my nails biting deep into my palms. Seeing me about to collapse, a flash of charitable pity actually crossed Victor's eyes. He took a step forward, trying to stroke my hair like he used to. "Be a good girl, Vivienne." He spoke with the ultimate gentleness, saying the most vicious words. "Just play along for now. Once Chloe has the baby and secures the family inheritance, the Commission will back off. Then I’ll divorce her immediately and marry you again." Smack! Using every ounce of my strength, I slapped him hard across the face. The blow was so heavy that Victor's head snapped to the side. His gold-rimmed glasses hit the floor, and a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. "Get out." I pointed at the door, my voice like ice. "Take your precious Chloe and get the hell out of my house!" Victor touched his lip. His eyes grew dark and dangerous. Beside him, Dominic laughed, gloating. "Wake up, Vivienne. No one is ever going to love a boring woman like you." They slammed the door and left. Drained of all strength, I slid to the floor. Victor's statement blew up. The homepage of my gallery was swarmed. Countless insults and curses flooded in. [So Vivienne Costello was the crazy, obsessed stalker all along.] [Disgusting. Making up rumors about someone else just because she got dumped. How is a bitch like this even allowed in the art world?!] Chapter 5 High society's blacklist came faster than I expected. In just one day, I lost all my restoration orders and was forced to sell my gallery for pennies. Walking down the street, former clients who used to greet me with warm smiles now dodged me like a plague, whispering behind my back. "That's her. The crazy woman kicked out of the Costello family." "So shameless. Spreading rumors about someone being a mistress when she was the one thrown out on the street." I pulled my light trench coat tighter and picked up my pace, my face blank. Just as I reached the corner near my old gallery, a gang of rival mob thugs ambushed me from an alley. Fired up by the dark web bounty and the rumors, they took all their rage out on me—the discarded "ex-wife." "Beat this gang-war-starting bitch to death!" someone shouted. The next second, a brick flew through the air and smashed into my shoulder. I stumbled backward. Before I could catch my balance, a heavy metal baseball bat slammed violently into my back. Thud! The agonizing pain made my vision go black. I hit the pavement hard. Broken glass pierced my palms; my knees were scraped raw and bloody. Surrounded by the thugs' crazy screaming and kicking, I could only curl into a tight ball, desperately shielding my stomach. Suddenly, a familiar, tearing cramp struck deep in my lower belly. A warm liquid gushed down my thighs, quickly soaking my light coat in red. "The baby... my baby..." Fear coiled around my heart like a venomous snake. I was breaking out in a cold sweat from the pain, my breathing shaky. "Stop!" Tires screeched as a dozen black, bulletproof Maybachs violently pulled up to the curb. Heavily armed guards stormed out and quickly scattered the thugs. The car doors opened. Victor and Dominic, one on each side, carefully escorted Chloe—and her small baby bump—out of the car. It turned out they were in the area for Chloe’s checkup at a nearby high-end private clinic. Seeing me lying on the ground covered in blood, Victor stopped dead in his tracks. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his pupils shrank. Instinctively, he started to step toward me. "Victor..." Using every ounce of strength I had left, I reached my bloody hand out to him. My voice was a broken rasp. "Please... save the baby... our baby..." My fingertips were trembling. It was the final plea for the child I had risked my life to conceive. Just as Victor was about to take another step... Chloe gripped his arm tightly. Her voice shook. "Victor, I'm so scared... Is she faking it again? She used to fake being sick all the time to keep Dominic..." Dominic immediately chimed in. "Vivienne, have you no shame?! Faking a miscarriage? That is low, even for you!" Victor stopped. "Vivienne, drop the pathetic act. I told you, once Chloe has the baby, we’ll remarry. Stop throwing tantrums until then." He turned his back, shielded Chloe, and walked toward the bulletproof Maybach without looking back once. Dominic sneered coldly and followed right behind them. I watched their retreating backs in pure despair. The pain robbed me of my senses. I could feel the tiny life I had sacrificed half my own to create slipping away from my body, drop by drop. When I woke up, three days had passed. The harsh smell of disinfectant filled the room. The doctor held my chart, looking at me with pity. "Mrs. Costello, I'm so sorry. Because your body was already damaged from multiple rounds of IVF, combined with the heavy trauma and delayed treatment... we couldn't save the baby. And it will be nearly impossible for you to conceive again." I lay in the pale hospital bed, listening quietly. No hysterical breakdowns. No wailing or crying. When your heart completely shatters, it doesn't make a sound. Now I understood. I pulled out my SIM card, flooded with thousands of death threats, and tossed it into the trash. On the day I was discharged, I went back to the estate. I packed up everything I owned and shipped it away. Sitting in the empty living room, I pulled out two waterproof courier bags. In the first bag, I put the medical records of my miscarriage. Addressed to: Victor Costello. In the second bag, I put a stack of yellowed black-market antibiotic receipts, a photo of the bloody shirt from when I took a knife for him, and the bank receipts. On top of it all, I placed a newly written note with the exact same words I left for him fifteen years ago. Addressed to: Dominic Russo. The precious savior he worshipped half his life was nothing but a downright thief. After mailing the packages, I grabbed my suitcase and walked out of the city that had trapped me for six years. I am never coming back.